One of the best mysteries I’ve read this year is Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny. If you haven’t happened across this series about Inspector Gamache, you have some good reading ahead.

This rich telling skillfully weaves several story lines together. Chief Inspector Gamache, of the Sûreté du Quebec, is recuperating both physically and mentally from a recent case, while staying with an old friend and mentor in Quebec City. Soon Gamache is drawn into the murder of an archeologist, who was searching for the remains of Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Quebec. Ironically, the man was discovered in an English language library, one of the last bastions of the English speaking minority in the city. At the same time, Gamache is concerned that the wrong man from a previous case may have been wrongly incarcerated, and sends one of his best inspectors to the small village of Three Pines to investigate. (Three Pines and its residents have figured into previous novels in the series.)

Author Penny has managed to juggle all the story lines into a very cohesive whole, with believable characters and well defined settings. I would love to visit Quebec City after reading this book (though maybe in the summer months!) A note to potential readers: if you first read the preceding fifth book in the series, A Brutal Telling, you will understand and appreciate this most recent one even more.